December 18, 2007

I was quickly glancing at an article I thought might interest me enough to be bloggable, and the first thing I saw was this:

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is.

The first thing I thought was: Oh, somebody is trying to write like Christopher Hitchens. Let's see who. Oops! It is Christopher Hitchens. Hummph. That's odd. Clearly, when I know it's Christopher Hitchens, I have a much more positive reaction to his writing. In fact, even now, as I reread that, knowing it is Christopher Hitchens, I feel my hostility soften.

The Hitchens Corollary to Godwin's Law stipulates that if you mention Hitchens' drinking in an argument, Hitchens wins.

Hitch is the sort of quotable, distintive writer who probably runs the risk of being parodied on Saturday Night Live, if he hasn't already. Probably he's been accused of self-parody on more than one occasion.

Huckabee cannot win in a national election. This is why the liberals in the media have made him their darling and pushed him to the forefront.

He is too liberal socially on immigration, soft on crime, economically naive, dangerously Blithe about international politics and is basically a bleeding heart that will not gain the vote of the Republican base. His religiosity is a complete turn of for moderate Republicans and more so for Democrats. Once he is the candidate expect that the media will begin beating the "Theocrats are taking over the government" drum relentlessly.

Plus he is a dead ringer for Jim Nabors and will have the Goober/Gomer Pyle image hung around his neck.

He is a loser. Hitchens recognizes this, probably for different reasons than I do... but a loser just the same.

Oh please. Hitchens might be a drunken obnoxious boor, but at least he is a talented drunken obnoxious boor. Coulter is a completely talentless, shrill, bullshitting hack. She does nothing but hurl insults and make baseless and dishonest attacks.

This is why the liberals in the media have made him their darling and pushed him to the forefront.

Yeah, that's right. Huckabee's rise is all a plot by the nefarious left wing media. A cross-dressing, thrice married, gun controlling, abortion supporting former mayor of New York with a mean streak and a flip-flopping, animal abusing, homophobic, socialized medicine loving, Mormon former Governor of Taxachussetts just weren't bad enough candidates for us lefties to be happy with for you Republicans so we sent word to our buddies in big media (especially our best bud Rupert Murdoch) to push the bible-thumpin' holy roller from Hope.

Well, HL Mencken did enjoy wearing silk cocktail dresses. He often played dress up with Walter Winchell, J Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. Frank Costello had a photo to that effect which is why the FBI and the press didn't discover the Mafia until 1964.

I think Hitchens was drunk when he wrote this. His whole article is laughable and basically consists of name calling.

Huckabee has been elected Gov of Arkansas and judging by his TV appearances and deftness in answering questions, a fairly intelligent man.

Hitchens, OTOH, is nothing more than a boor and a boob, gifted with a certain literary skill. But he's too lazy or drunk to know the facts and too foolish to make a persuasive argument. He's the Slate's version of Howard Stern.

And comparison's to Coulter are absurd. Coulter is smart, graduated from Law School, has written 4 best sellers, clerked for Federal Appeals Judges, and is FUNNY.

Damn, If I only could write like Christoper (not the banned one)! Well, maybe it would be even better if I could write like Hemingway (not the beautiful sister actors). Frankly , I'd be quite happy to be able to write like Althouse. I spent too much time watching TV instead of reading as a kid. I seldom watch TV anymore on account of it. If only books came in Technicolor. I'm waiting for scientists to come out with the brain-enhancing pill to make this possible. The cure for cancer can wait!

Mean drunk though he may be, I find myself agreeing with Hitchins more than disagreeing with him. Such as, I don't care for Huckabee either, although we disagree on the reasons for not liking him. My dislike has nothing to do with religion. If anything, that's a reason why I might like him. It's his record as governor that gets in the way of me liking him, the 1,033 pardons and commutations he issued, the 21 state tax increases he oversaw, etc.

Beyond that I totally agree with Hitchins about the religious test language in the Constitution. It's amazing, all the supposed knowledgable talking heads and others intoning somberly that the religion of the candidates shouldn't be taken into consideration because the Constitution says that there are to be no religious tests for public office. Pure caca. OF COURSE voters can consider religion, and whether the particular religion a candidate follows has beliefs which are kooky or creepy. In fact, I'd go so far as to that voters ARE OBLIGATED to examine that. The religious test provision means that candidates as a matter of law cannot be required to meet certain religous criteria before being qualified to hold office. Not the same things at all.

Have there really been complaints that noting Huckabee's Minister status is some kind of Constitutionally-banned practice? They've slipped under my radar if that's the case. Is that what Hitchen's rambling about, or did I mis-read things?

I find Hitchens prose way too Look how smart I am. Why use the word inerrant, for example?

Not mine. The writing is what it is; if it turns out to be Hitchens, so much the worse for Hitchens.

Never thought much of that guy anyhow. I can't help thinking he writes not what he thinks is true and persuasive on its own merits, but what he thinks will most likely bamboozle the target audience into thinking he's a guy they ought to agree with. It's patronizing and it's crudely done. He reminds me of lefties when they go into Chest-Thumping Outraged Cartoon Patriot Mode and accuse the administration of "betraying the troops" or whatever, in the belief that conservatives will blindly agree with anybody who strikes that pose.

It's an attempt at appealing to the emotions of somebody whose emotional language you don't speak, and who isn't as dumb as you like to think. You can yell in English as loud as you like at somebody who only speaks Urdu, but all you'll communicate is that you're an idiot.

You get a bit of the same thing when conservatives tell liberals they should be opposed to Islamism on the grounds that it embodies everything they claim to be opposed to, and opposes everything that they agree with (except anti-Americanism). Well, kinda yeah, but if you don't empathize with how they feel about it and why, you'll never effectively appeal to those emotions.

It's a hell of a lot easier to propagandize your own side than the other guy. That fact explains 99.9% of the political debate in the US today.

Hitchens seems to think he's talking to Democrats here, with the "smirking chimp" garbage. It looks to me like the kind of crap they usually respond well to, so I'm betting they'll just shake their heads sadly and wonder what he's yammering about.

"This is why the liberals in the media have made him their darling and pushed him to the forefront."

Freder: Yeah, that's right. Huckabee's rise is all a plot by the nefarious left wing media.

Uh, no Freder. Read it again more carefully. The commenter is likely referring to recent news & leaks from DNC that Democrat strategists are deliberately handling him with soft gloves because they believe he'll be the easiest GOP candidate to beat.

If people like Freder don't believe that the media is controlling the political dialogue for their own purposes they are just not paying attention. This manipulation has been going on for years. It is just lately with the alternative sources of information that we have available that the manipulation is more apparent.

By ignoring some candidates (Thompson for example) and giving more supposedly free public air time to others, they are controlling the dialogue. They (the 90% of the media that is left leaning) are treating Huckabee with kid gloves and pushing him to the forefront with their breathless discovery of him because they know he is the weakest candidate and cannot possibly win a national election.

Poor Hitchens, he still hasn't recoved from the devastating thumping he took in his debate with Dinesh D'souza.

Well, I did not see the entire thing, but Dinesh's first comment sums up pretty well why I have to seriously doubt that Hitchens was "devastatingly" thumped. In these remarks, D'Souza feigns astonishment at why there is such a thing as "militant" atheism, comparing the situations of people who don't believe in God with those who do not believe in unicorns.

D'Souza believes it's a rational argument that since there is no reason for him to get "militant" about his non-belief in unicorns, there is absolutely no reason why atheists should be "militant" regarding their non-belief in God. Perhaps this argument might work if those who believed in unicorns comprised the majority of the population, and certain sects of these unicorn-believers tried to push their silly "unicorn-based" social policies down everyone's throats.

OK, now that I've got my semi-Hitchensesque rant out of the way, on to the actual topic :P

It seems every time Ann posts anything from Hitchens on here, those who disagree with him typically only bring up the fact that he drinks, or is an ass. Very rarely do I see a worthwhile rebuttal, and this post is no exception.

I believe Hitchens gets it right on the head. Both in the comments here, and on many conservative commentators websites and articles, I have seen an enormous amount of "How dare anyone question Mitt Romney because of his Mormonism" or "How dare they pay any attention to the fact that Huckabee does not believe in evolution." And, although not really on the boards here, I have seen plenty of people, including Romney himself in his speech, invoke the "religious test" specter when arguing this point.

Hitchens is spot-on. Just as I'm sure Romney wouldn't vote for a Satanist or someone who believed they were the reincarnation of Jesus, even if many of their policy positions matched up, we certainly have the right to be highly skeptical of someone who adheres to a religion that believes all human life started in Jackson County, Missouri . . .

Either that, or Huckabee really is exceptionally stupid and weak, and Hitch is simply brave enough to call it as he sees it.

Huck's a corrupt, too-slick preacher who grants pardons after taking bribes or simply because the prisoner says he's found Jesus. It's despicable. He leverages the power of the state to force someone to change his religion in order to get clemency. If Huck was demanding conversion to Islam as a get-out-of-jail-free card, I don't think you'd have so much trouble seeing how reprehensible it is.

Huck doesn't believe in evolution, and in fact wants his religion squaring off against it. Good. If a vital component of your religion is that evolution must be false, then your religion is wrong and it's doomed. Since I'm an atheist, I want your religion to be doomed. It's like making a religion out of rejecting gravity--it can't stand against the weight of the evidence.

Huck is with Pat Robertson in blaming abortion, lesbianism, drug use, and tolerance in general for all of society's ills. That's vile.

Huck thinks the "FairTax" is a good idea. A 30% federal sales tax is a foolish idea. At such high rates, the incentive to cheat is too compelling for the idea to be workable.

Huck wants to invade Pakistan and make nice with Iran. He says Bush is a meanie, and we need a nicer foreign policy based on treating countries as if they were our neighbors, but he spouts off bits of wisdom from Michael Corleone at the same time.

Huck doesn't have a consistent position on immigration. One minute, it's unchristian to want to enforce our laws. The next, he wants to toss everyone out.

Huck wants more government programs of almost every kind.

Huck is supposedly pro-2nd Amendment, but every big-government politician I've ever seen has always considered the 2nd Amendment a hindrance at best. That's the first thing he'd throw out the window if he had the chance.

Mike Huckabee is a stupid creep. Hitchens is just calling it as he sees it. It needs to be said. To every Evangelical who is pretending that Huck is a halfway decent candidate: you look like an idiot. And to every Evangelical who is crying bigotry: you're just projecting your own insecurities onto this debate.

But if Obama's big claim to fame is that he was from the ghetto, was part of ghetto culture, had ghetto friends, did ghetto things while in previous offices, held conflicting, ghetto policy positions, and his ghetto supporters indignantly demanded that no one mention his classlessness and bizarre policy positions, that non-ghetto Democrats wouldn't stand for it.

Of course, that doesn't describe Senator Obama at all. It does start to describe Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. When they aren't taking bribes or knocking up staffers, or leading protest marches because a company is "disrespecting" them by not giving in to their extortion, or performing goofy rhyming oratory, or marching on behalf of the most recent young-black-criminal du jour, or . . . you know what I mean. Democrats have rejected them time and again, and blacks knew it wasn't because of racism. It's because they were poor candidates. But apparently Evangelicals are blind about Huckabee. They can't even imagine that he's not a great candidate. What we have here is a failure of imagination. But for people who don't even understand evolution, what do you expect?

I would submit that there is a rather substantial difference between Hitchens' use of "stupid hick" when describing Huckabee and your reference to Obama as "stupid nigger."

Especially in the context of Hitchens' argument, "hick" is not simply used only as a derogatory statement about someone from the South (hell, I've heard people refer to fellow Wisconsinites and other Midwesterners as hicks). In his context, it is mainly based on what he (and I) see as extremely irrational thinking, (i.e. granting pardons to people simply because they "found Jesus" while in jail) based solely on rather baseless beliefs. Meanwhile, your hypothetical characterization of Obama as "stupid nigger" would only be based on the fact that he is black.

In fact, I would argue that this is a rather rare instance of poor writing skill on Hitchens' part. Based on the context of the piece, the hick part is rather redundant, placed in there, probably, to emphasize Hitchens' absolute disgust and shock at Huckabee's positions